John has gone to your place today taking the maps and I cannot reckon exactly what reducing the rock six feet would accomplish but I judge that six feet would not be enough to give you the advantage you imagine.

Before giving my reasons I may say in general that except for the consideration of expense I am convinced that the highest place that we have considered for your house, provided you had the outworks that we proposed, would have been much the most satisfactory to you, except only because the approaches and outworks would have cost too much. In this judgment I take fully into consideration Mrs Loring’s liking to step quickly from the house into the service garden. I do not think that in practice there would be much to choose in that respect while in others there would be a good deal.

I consider that when you concluded to take the site last selected for your house you did so partly because of what you thought its greater convenience; partly because you thought that it would cost you less to build than that on the height; accepting for these reasons the disadvantage of a comparatively confined situation and a narrow and one-sided outlook. I have been inclined to think that you overestimated the comparative convenience of the lower site, not sufficiently [497]

[498] realizing what would be gained by the snug arrangement of outworks that we had devised for the upper place. I have also been inclined to fear that you would never be quite satisfied with what you have had in view and that you would be tempted little by little to lessen your unsatisfied sense by after-improvements, the cost of which, being carried out in a desultory way and piece meal, would make the lower site the more expensive of the two. Something like this I have found to be a common course of prudent men in dealing with country places. But all depends on your personality. You might find that what you have had in view would exactly suit you. I might be satisfied with it, but I don’t think that most men or most women would, and that you will note this suggestion of removing part of the rock immediately in your front makes me feel to be a little more probable.

Now, as to this question. If you are to have a body of low bushes to look upon and over in place of the rock they should have generally about three feet of loam and soil between them and the underlying ledge, otherwise just when you want them to be most surely fresh and cheering, (i.e. in very dry hot weather) they will be weak and sickly in appearance. Suppose that you confine your selection to shrubs not likely ever to grow above four feet high I should think that it would be a large amount of rock that would have to be taken out (in order that the tops of your bushes would not come too high), and that it would be years before the result would be quite congruous with the general natural aspect of your scenery. It rather seems to me, though I do not say so with perfect confidence, that it would [499]

be better to let your outlook be contracted in that direction, accept the rock as an important feature in your composition, lessen the apparent barrenness and aridity of the situation by a skirting of bushes and by leading vines, rooting at some distance from its shallow borders, over the less interesting parts of it, and then aiming at a character in what would stand for a lawn on its right that would not be inharmonious with its wildness.

I believe that this is the first time in forty years where a choice has had to be made between two neighboring sites for a dwelling, and my advice has been asked, that it has not been given in favor of the lower of the two. I ask myself how it comes to be otherwise in this case, for I have never had a doubt about it from the moment I approached the upper place of yours. The answer seems to be that an affair first rate of its kind can be had at a certain expense in this upper place; an affair of very distinct and complete and unquestionable advantages which no man, whatever his personal tastes, could help being much pleased with, while in [500]the lower side-hill place, however nice and agreeable and convenient it may be, one will always have a sense of its not being perfect of its kind and a wish that the natural conditions had been a little different, so as to give a more direct, broader and more balanced outlook and either more or less show of rock, and, if more, a disposition of it with which the house would seem better compared.

If you ask why I said that I might be better satisfied with it than most men, I suppose that the answer is that I have a somewhat morbidly retiring and seclusive disposition, and, being an old man, my likings are better disciplined to my necessities than I expect other peoples to be.

You will not think that I am disposed to make you dissatisfied with your choice. As you have asked me personally to give you my opinion, I have tried to do so frankly and fully. I don’t think your choice is a bad one but it involves the acceptance of certain drawbacks to which you must reconcile yourself. It is perfectly reasonable to do so.

Yours Truly